


August

by LNJames



Series: Suddenly Everything Has Changed [5]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-08 21:21:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14702580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LNJames/pseuds/LNJames
Summary: Wake up.Season 3 re-imagined. Canon-ish with liberty and justice for all.





	August

_Every kiss is a goodbye._

Gold in the air of summer, she drifted high, suspended aloft in the balmy sky. The warm currents swayed her back and forth while the butter heat lulled her to and fro. She felt weightless and almost as clean as a white bleached shell washed up on the shore of the beaches at Midvale. The taste of the air through her lungs was like darkened honey, thick and sweet from flowers almost too delicate to name and too many to count. _Jasmine. Peony. Honeysuckle. Tuberose. Gardenia. Lilacs_. There were no clouds and the sky was as blue as a dream, blue like a flame so hot that it became the only color that could hold the sun. Everything was bright, everything was golden, everything was quiet. Kara Zor-El was at peace. Finally.

_Wake up._

With a start, Kara’s eyes opened and she was no longer drifting in the atmosphere, soaking in the sun and growing strong. She was instead softly draped by a body, a Luthor arm and a Luthor leg strewn across her, warm and holding her down. She smiled as the morning sun dappled across her face and across the dark strands of hair that covered her too, lungs that took steady breaths against her. She was in National City. She was in her apartment. She was in her bed. Lena Luthor was on top of her and all was right with the world.

“..you’re awake…”

Softly mumbled words against her neck made Kara smile as she ran her fingertips along a bare Luthor back, stairstepping upwards until she found dark hair to tangle and tether. Kara settled her hips a little and pulled Lena closer, feeling a hand run up her arm and rest on her bicep as if Lena could hold her down. The morning sun shined brighter, a morning breeze ruffling the sheer curtains of her apartment until they waved like wheat, slowly blowing out and snapping gently back, blowing out and settling, blowing out and exhaling. Kara counted each wave, keeping time with the way her fingertips pressed against each soft ridge down Lena’s spine until her hand rested in the dip of her back, gliding up over curves and a hip that pressed into her own. She let out a breath and smiled, her soft words floating up in the morning air, eyes closed.

“No, I’m not..”

She felt Lena shift until the weight at her side was now on top of her and her hands instinctively went to bare hips. Kara smiled at warm breath against her neck and the way a tangled mess of black hair spread across her shoulders and chest. Lena’s hands were in her own hair and she could feel the slightest tease of teeth and lips. There was something grounding about feeling the weight of a human, feather thin on her, really, but there nonetheless. The sun had changed her body, had transformed it here on Earth, made it hum with energy and power and strength. Kara had gotten used to that, mostly, but it was the softness of humans, the lightness of their bodies, the tenderness of this particular human trying to hold down a superhero and keep her from flight that made Kara sigh out as Lena’s mouth trailed up along her unbreakable jaw.

“Then wake up…”

Lena’s voice was like molasses, dark and rich dripping against her skin, covering her in its soft sweetness. She never wanted to leave this place, not when Lena’s hips were starting press into her own.

“Mmmm..nope..”

She could feel Lena’s smile against her chin, before soft kisses pressed into the corner of her mouth and she welcomed such things. She could taste Lena on the edge of her lips and her hands reached down curves to pull her in tighter, closer, as one of Lena’s legs shifted between her own. She felt one of Lena’s hands gently press against her cheek, a thumb resting on her lips and that low honeyed voice rumbling in her ear.

“Wake up, Kara...please...”

Her eyes were closed tight and felt herself drift a little, in the feelings and the sensations and the way her body sung when it touched Lena Luthor’s. She followed those gold tendrils, smiling as Lena’s weight pressed her into the bed.

*

_August was sticky and hot and everything that Kara knew humans hated about summer, but she was in her glory. Fist forward, she swerved through the crossed steel beams of National City’s largest bridge, skimming over the river flowing into the bay and watching her speed leave a wake of waves across the surface. She could feel the cape behind her whipping in the wind and she smiled at Winn’s design, the way the material cut through the air aerodynamically in sync with the wind currents, the direction she was flying, and the air temperature. It helped balance her but she was also starting to experiment with how it could change her speed, thrusting air forward or back with each dip and turn she made._

_Kara spent a great deal of time in the air, tasting the clouds and harnessing the wind. It was hers, this space where no human could follow or intrude, freedom on a current and where her body itched to be when the ground became too much. She would never admit it outloud, but sometimes being around too many humans and the energy they gave off made her crave being..alone. Enough time in the Phantom Zone can do that to someone with alien blood and a body not meant for earth. Being on the ground meant she had to live three lives, separate three identities, and navigate how the world and the people around her interacted with each of them. Kara Zor-El. Kara Danvers. Supergirl -- all trying to exist in one place and time and mostly getting it right._

_But in the air, no one could touch her. No one could ask more of her than she asked of herself which was why she kicked into higher gear and zoomed to the Waterfront neighborhood, the blaring of sirens and shouts already ringing in her ear. The call had come in at the hottest time of the day, the late afternoon when the sun had beat down on concrete and steel and reflected off of gray-blue water in blazing sheets and she squinted her eyes from a mile away, seeing crowds around an overturned truck, hands shielding eyes from the blinding hot sunlight and the red and blue blinking lights of NCPD. Her earpiece chirped._

_“Kara, we’ve got a few civilian injuries from pedestrians in the park. We also found some trace electromagnetic signatures. Could be Coluan.”_

_Alex Danver’s voice mingled with the whizzing of the air as Kara came closer. Coluan, like Indigo? Surely not._

_“Oh, and L-Corp reps are here. The accident involved one of their cargo trucks.”_

_Kara hitched a little at that and sped faster, before she came down heavy on the concrete street, slowing to a running stop. The scene around her was semi-chaos, ambulances and police working on the few injured. A quick glance told her that while there was urgency, there was no imminent danger. Several DEO agents were examining the overturned truck while Kara assessed the situation._

_“Supergirl! Help!”_

_One of the paramedics was frantically waving her way from near the back end of the long flatbed cargo truck._

_“The contents shifted and rolled on to her!”_

_Underneath a 30 foot long concrete cylinder, a young girl’s leg was now about to be crushed, in that precarious position of being stuck between the curb and the tonnage. Kara ran over and knelt down, putting on hand on the girl to calm her, her mother’s cries in her ear, before she used her other hand to slip under the cylinder. Its diameter was the size of rain barrel, but it was heavy, even by her standards. Kara’s brows came together when her hand burned a little from the contact. The August sun blazed down on the scene and on the black concrete cylinder._

_“Hurry, Supergirl!”_

_She brought her other hand to easily leverage the cylinder off the girl and hold it aloft while paramedics rushed in, stabilizing and tending to an injury that could have been worse were it not for the wedge and the angle and some good luck. Kara hefted the concrete length above her head and stood, holding it out of the way for a stretcher and feeling the prickle of hot sharpness against her palms. Her eyes searched the crowd for Alex before she heard a familiar voice coming towards her._

_“Supergirl!”_

_There was always a particular dissonance in hearing this name come from Lena Luthor’s tongue in public, as if Lena had to catch herself now and her stilted voice was a give away if anyone who knew her well was around to notice. As it was, she watched her CEO girlfriend rush towards her, other L-Corp staff following behind her. She kept her face steady, aware of the crowd around them and the way she was supposed to act and the reserve she had to maintain when a superhero was needed. The public was starting to murmur about Lena Luthor and Kara Danvers as it was, she didn’t need to contribute to any other speculation that the look on Supergirl’s face might suggest. These dueling identities and her relationship with Lena meant extra juggling, extra care, extra caution. Alex was moving towards them both as medics transported the teary girl and her mother away. Kara nodded towards Lena, still holding the length of concrete above her head and feeling pins and needles in her hands._

_“Ms. Luthor, I assume this is yours?”_

_She saw Lena look at her, her eyes flashing a quick and subtle ‘are you okay?’ question that Kara nodded and smiled at, their unspoken language still private._

_“It is, unfortunately.”_

_Kara watched Lena take stock of the situation quickly, her eyes taking in the overturned truck, the driver holding something cold against his head as he was being interviewed by a police officer, the injured being put into ambulances. Kara saw a nod of Lena’s head when a new truck pulled up around the block, the large white L on the cab giving it away. The CEO was about to give orders, she could tell. Her hair wound in a tight bun on top of her head to keep the summer heat off her neck, but her pale skin still reddened in the sun. A pair of sunglasses rested on her head and her heels were entirely not suitable for a hurried stride towards an accident scene._

_“Gerard, prepare the transport truck to assist Supergirl in removing this from the scene. Sandra, check on injuries and the families, do whatever is necessary to assist financially and otherwise. I want their comfort to be priority. Becker, assess cause and responsibility and work with legal to respond to any questions that NCPD have. Find out what happened and ensure it’s the last time.”_

_Each one nodded and moved quickly to carry out orders before Alex halted Kara from flying the cargo to the new transport truck._

_“Hang on, Ms. Luthor. We need to inspect this carefully, agents on the scene detected suspicious electrical signatures coming from the truck or its contents.”_

_Kara watched as Lena put her aviator sunglasses on before she looked up at the concrete weight and then at the overturned truck before she spoke carefully to Alex._

_“Agent Danvers, this is a routine core sample taken from the new re-construction zone near the port. L-Corp has been taking cores from sites around National City after the Daxamite attack as part of our environmental remediation efforts. We’re measuring and monitoring lead levels that may have leached into the soil or into the water table. We take all precautions to encase the samples in electromagnetically neutralized concrete casings. I intend to get to the bottom on what happened, but I assure you, there is nothing about our procedures that isn’t industry best practices.”_

_Kara watched as two people she considered to be closest to her address each other so formally. They had spent all summer carefully and awkwardly becoming friendly, brought together by their mutual affection for Kara and their love of science. No one would guess that they had argued last weekend about who would get the last ice cream bar during movie night and that Kara had won only because Maggie stepped in when Lena and Alex tried to one-up the other on who amongst them had the highest molecular density and therefore needed the calorie offset the most or the least. Maggie just grabbed the ice cream bar from the freezer and tossed it through the air to Kara on the couch and that was that. It was also why Kara had a very big soft spot for Alex’s girlfriend, the very same one that she saw pull up in a squad car to the scene and get out, surveying the scene. But right now, her sister and her girlfriend were all business in this public setting. Alex shifted the tablet in her hand and held up the wireless sensor near where Kara was still holding the tonnage above her head._

_“When I got on scene, the readings on my scanner suggested abnormal amounts of concentrated electromagnetic pulsations. We saw similar two years ago when an..enemy combatant..infiltrated National City’s circuitry to almost disastrous effects. A thorough electromagnetic scan is best practice in the field I’m in, I assure you.”_

_Kara shifted her weight a bit and repositioned the cylinder in her hands at the reminder of Indigo and Myriad and the loss that came with that time. When she was young, she could almost feel a shift in the air in her family’s Kryptonian house when a Coluan was in inside, providing superior computational skills to fuel her father’s scientific questions. She hadn’t sensed any Coluan energy since Indigo was defeated. She watched as Lena came over to peer at the screen and the device Alex held._

_“Are you using a closed-loop galvanometer or one more appropriate for detecting abnormal from normal wave pulsations? At L-Corp, we’ve developed a highly sensitive resonant mirror galvanometer that isolates man-made patterns from those originating from outside the earth’s atmosphere.”_

_Kara didn’t need her super hearing to detect the slightly indignant inhale of breath she knew well from Alex Danvers, older sister and not too shabby at science herself._

_“This is state of the art equipment, Ms. Luthor, not a pre-school issued galvanometer. I adjusted for the obvious factors, including solar flare velocity and the distance between placements of each transducer from here to National City Power. We even narrowed the wave measurement level to 10 to the -10th power, so we are fully capable of separating out earth produced electromagnetic sources from alien.”_

_From where she stood, Kara could see the tow truck coming to right the cargo transport on to its wheels. Her eyes penetrated each ambulance or squad car to assess the injured. Those with injuries were mostly minor, even the girl she had just rescued, based on the conversation she overheard Maggie having with the NCPD scene lead. Above her head, she glanced up and did a quick x-ray scan of the concrete, seeing nothing inside the core except for layers of dirt and rock and mud that made up the crust of earth that held National City and its port. The scene was secure, everyone was safe, the danger over from her perspective, except for the two women standing in front of her, somewhat oblivious to a superhero’s feats of strength. Kara tried not to make a sound when she saw a dark eyebrow raise._

_“Frankly, I’m surprised your state of the art digital equipment didn’t come with the equally obvious instructions to adjust the analog sensor to compensate for surface temperatures of 90 with humidity levels at I would guess 43%. Might I suggest taking another reading, Agent Danvers? August is brutal for detecting abnormalities not caused by the refractory vectors of that hydrogen ball in the sky - we’re talking 38 degrees altitude, 265 azimuth give or take a few degrees. Our open loop device would automatically adjust for such things.”_

_Kara sighed. She loved them both. She really did, even in this August heat, even holding up a very heavy core sample of dirt and rock that her girlfriend was trucking around town and her sister was sure was full of alien DNA._

_“Can you two nerds fight it out with some math relays or something instead of making Supergirl hold that thing all day. It too damn hot for this nonsense.”_

_Maggie’s exasperated voice interrupted the debate as the NCPD detective stepped between them, pulled the tablet and sensor from Alex’s hands and walked over to Kara._

_“Supergirl, is there an alien in that thing or not?”_

_Kara looked down at Maggie, the shorter detective had her hair pulled back in a ponytail, sleeves rolled up to her elbows with a heavy NCPD vest over her shirt, sweat pouring from her brow. Despite the heat, there was a twinkle in Maggie Sawyer’s eye. If anyone knew the struggles and rewards of being the girlfriend of one of those two women who now stared at them with hands on their respective hips, it was this no nonsense detective and as Kara had found out the hard way one game night, master poker player who had no qualms about taking all of her money. Kara glanced over at Lena and Alex, each one giving her a look she knew meant they expected to be supported._

_“I don’t think so. It’s just rock and dirt inside a hot concrete tube. No doubt very important from an environmental monitoring standpoint. But I can tell it was safely secured and it’s always good to double check for alien presence. You can’t be too careful all the way around.”_

_Maggie smiled up at her and turned her head back towards Lena and Alex._

_“You hear that? Supergirl says you both were right. Congratulations. Now, can she go put this down over there so we can wrap these reports up? There’s an ice cold beer with my name on it sitting in the refrigerator of a very smart woman I know. Surely, Ms. Luthor could stand to get out of this heat in that black dress she insists on wearing to run across town to check on her dirt sample. I would think Ms Luthor has other important matters on her hands to take care, wouldn’t you assume, Supergirl?”_

_They all looked at each other as L-Corp staff started to gather, along with random paramedics and officers and even a reporter from CatCo had taken notice of the sight. Anytime something happened involving Lena Luthor or Supergirl, it was bound to draw a crowd and this was no exception. Kara smiled as she heard Lena clear her throat and cross her arms. Act natural._

_“I’m thankful no one was seriously hurt, I know L-Corp will see to the well-being of the injured. I appreciate your thoroughness, Agent Danvers and certainly your assistance, Detective Sawyer._ _And Supergirl...you have my gratitude as always. I do hope there is some way I can repay you.”_

_Kara nearly dropped the core sample she was holding because Lena, while very professional in the midst of it all, had lowered her voice slightly at the words ‘do hope’ and ‘repay you’ in a way that she had come to recognize well. She felt her hands spark a little against the concrete, the heat of the August sun and its effects on her Kryptonian body making her want the air or something darker. She nodded with a quick response, not trusting herself to say more when the CatCo reporter she didn’t know held up a recording device._

_“Happy to help, Ms. Luthor. No need to repay me.”_

_Kara took to the air just in time to see Lena quirk the corner of her mouth in a smile that told her that when the sun finally went down and it cooled off just enough, she would find Lena Luthor waiting for her on her balcony patio, a glass of cold white wine half consumed, a white sheer shirt clinging to curves that were soft enough to tame her wild hands, green eyes giving her permission to take what Lena’s lips promised and more, the heat of summer making everything combust into something Kara Zor-El understood, at an elemental level. She may seek out the air when the ground became too much, but there were things and people on this earth that pulled her back down again and again. Sometimes the best days were the hottest ones where there was nothing left to do but worship how the sun made every atom in her body hum against a human soft enough to absorb all of who she was. As Kara lifted the dirt of this world to its final destination, she smiled. Today would be memorable, the heat of August burning bright as she saw Lena wave towards her from below._

*

_Wake up._

With a start, Kara’s eyes opened and she felt sun against her face, a pillow soft under her head and scent of a summer morning in the air. She blinked a few times and took a breath, turning from her side to look up towards the light streaming in her windows. It took her a few moments, but she realized several things: she had fallen asleep, she was in her bed, she was wearing her favorite sweater, and she was alone. Kara pushed herself up and scooted to the edge of the bed, still hazy and still feeling like something was missing. At the edge of her thoughts, she couldn’t quite put the pieces of the puzzle together, the numbers didn’t quite add up in her still foggy head. She tried to remember what day it was, the weekend or a work day? Was it spring or summer or fall? Kara felt like she had lost something, time or a memory or something else real. A knock interrupted her disorientation and moved her towards action. With a tug, she pulled open the large steel door.

“It’s..you..”

Yes, that was stating the obvious. It was her. She was Kara Zor-El. But who was he?

“Can I..help you?”

With a quirk of his head, blue lights flashing in an alien way, he simply thrust out his arm, something gold and something polished dangled from his hand. It was hers and it was supposed to be around her neck. Kara quickly reached up to her throat and realized that something was missing, something was very, very missing.

“Now you’re talking to me...Supergirl is talking to me.”

As the air turned electric and she sensed a flow of energy she faintly recalled, Kara reached out to pull the man into her apartment.

“Whoa..inside now.”

Nothing made sense anymore and now Kara Danvers found herself standing in her apartment with an alien who knew she was Supergirl. This was a security risk, this was a situation, this was supposed to be one place where she was safe to be herself.

This was not good.


End file.
